Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPSnacks: Best of Steven Kotler, Flow Master and Peak Performance Expert

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

A few years ago, Steven Kotler set off on a quest to defy societal expectations of aging. By learning to park ski at age 53, he learned that old dogs can indeed learn new tricks. How did he do it? In ...this episode of YAPSnacks, you will hear the best segments from Steven’s four appearances on YAP that explain how to hack your own biology to work for you, rather than against you. He uncovers how to enter a flow state, the benefits of flow, and how to keep your mind and body sharp as you enter the second half of your life.  Steven is a New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance. His work has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes, translated into over 50 languages, and has appeared in over 100 publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, Wall Street Journal, TIME, and the Harvard Business Review. In this episode, Hala and Steven will discuss: - The three states of human consciousness  - How flow boosts motivation, creativity, and learning  - How do you enter a flow state?  - The Magic of Maybe  - The power of immediate feedback  - Can groups of people enter a flow state together?  - Why is motivation so important?  - The key steps to peak performance aging  - Why being in nature is vital to our health  - And other topics… Resources Mentioned: Steven’s Website: https://www.stevenkotler.com/ Steven’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-kotler-4305b110/ Steven’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/steven_kotler Steven’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenkotler/ Steven’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KotlerSteven/ Flow Research Collective Radio: https://www.stevenkotler.com/radio  Flow Research Collective: https://www.flowresearchcollective.com/zero-to-dangerous/overview?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=url&utm_campaign=getmoreflow Steven’s Books: https://www.stevenkotler.com/books  Steven Kotler: Flow Into The Future | E32: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/young-and-profiting-with-hala-taha/id1368888880?i=1000445189295  YAPLive: Unlocking Peak Performance with Steven Kotler on Clubhouse: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/young-and-profiting-with-hala-taha/id1368888880?i=1000526840067  Steven Kotler: Master the Impossible | E138: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/young-and-profiting-with-hala-taha/id1368888880?i=1000539587689  Steven Kotler: Steven Kotler: Peak Performance Aging, How to Stay at the Top of Your Game in Your 30s, 40s, 50s, and Beyond | E211: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/steven-kotler-peak-performance-aging-how-to-stay-at/id1368888880?i=1000601789897  LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course. Sponsored By:  Shopify - Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/profiting More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. What's up, young and profitors! You are listening to an episode of YAPSNACS, a series of bite-sized content hosted by me, Hala Taha. If you've been listening to YAP for a while, I think you definitely know the name Stephen Collar.
Starting point is 00:00:39 Stephen is one of the world's leading experts in peak performance, flow, and productivity. He's the goat of human peak performance. He's the executive director of Flow Research Collective. He's written over a dozen bestselling books that have been translated in 40 languages. Stephen has been on YAP four times, and I don't doubt that he's going to be back on again. Every conversation with him is an instant classic, and I wanted to take the time to feature some of my favorite segments of his interviews in today's YAP snacks It's a best of series so to speak and this episode is gonna
Starting point is 00:01:11 Primarily focus on flow strengthening your attention span and maximizing your productivity But we're also gonna dive deep on topics like motivation and peak performance aging Before we get started, I did want to give a quick overview of what a flow state is. Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best. Think about the last time we really got sucked into a project, like reading a book or playing a sport or maybe playing an instrument, to the point where the rest of the world just seemed to have melted away and has stopped. This is a flow state. It takes 90 to 120 minutes of uninterrupted concentration to enter a flow state, and it comes with some
Starting point is 00:01:51 incredible benefits like high-interprod activity, creativity, and learning. And this concept is pretty far into a lot of us, because if you think about the current culture surrounding work, it's not really conducive for entering a flow state. We're constantly checking our email, answering messages on Slack, picking up phone calls, taking last minute assignments, we are rarely working on the same task for more than 20 minutes, let alone 90 minutes. Research from UC Irvine shows that it takes 23 minutes for you to regain full focus on a task after you've been interrupted. So for constantly being bombarded by messages and impromptu office conversations, we may never fully regain our focus on whatever we're working on. And that is detrimental to the quality of our work. This actually reminds me
Starting point is 00:02:36 of a recent interview that I had that's coming out soon. It's with Yohan Hari and he wrote the book Stolen Focus. Now this interview was absolutely incredible. I really recommend that you guys check it out as a follow up to this one. And we talked about how to stop falling victim to the forces of power that are stealing away your attention. And he brought up a really good point. When you're ability to focus on a task diminishes,
Starting point is 00:02:56 so does your competency and your ability in general to perform at a high level. You can't accomplish your personal goals if you don't have focus. The way to really get into a flow state for me is to batch my time and to be really, really strict about the way in which I protect my time. I turn off notifications. I make sure everybody knows, like for example, when I'm studying for an interview, I like to get in a flow state.
Starting point is 00:03:18 I have four hours before my interview and I shut everything off and all I'm doing is concentrating on that interview. And one of my favorite things to do to study for my interview to make sure that I'm not distracted is I get my hair and makeup done now for my interviews. And I love when I'm blow-drying my hair or the girl is blow-drying my hair and doing my makeup because I'm forced to do nothing but study. It really helps me get in the zone. So for two hours, I'm stuck in a chair. I've got a hair dryer blowing and making sure that there's nothing else to do.
Starting point is 00:03:49 And I can't take calls. I can't do anything else but study. And I get so much work done because of an a forced flow state sitting in that chair getting my hair and makeup done. And it's great. It works out amazing. And so batching your time and doing things proactively
Starting point is 00:04:02 to make sure that you're not getting disrupted is a great way to get into a flow state. And I want to kick off this episode by explaining what actually happens to your brain when you enter a flow state and why flow states are so crucial for peak performance. So let's dive into this clip. It's from Steven's first interview on YAP way back when I was a baby podcaster episode number 32 flown to the future. Let's get right into it. So what exactly happens to our mental and physical when we enter into a flow state? Maybe let's start off at a neurobiological level.
Starting point is 00:04:33 What happens? In flow, we see really, really potent changes. We see large swatches, the prefrontal cortex, so this is where your executive function lives, a lot of your higher cognitive functions are housed there. It gets very, very, very quiet inflow. Most of it shuts off. We see brain waves move from where they are.
Starting point is 00:04:53 So right now you and I were talking, our brains are in beta. It's a fast-moving wave. It's where we are and we're awake in alert. Below beta is a slower wave alpha. This is sort of the signature of creativity. It's daydreaming mode It's the brain going from thought to thought without a lot of internal resistance One level down is theta, which is sort of where we are
Starting point is 00:05:12 Not that often when we're awake though you can have waking state theta But REM sleep the agaugic state. It's where you're going from idea to idea with no internal resistance Right, you're you're falling asleep You're thinking about a green sweater you wore during the day, and it turns into a green elephant, and it turns into a green ocean, and a green planet, right? That's data. So flow takes place on the borderline between alpha and theta. So it's a lot different. Now, your brain actually pops all over the place when you're in that state, but it returns to this baseline. And then, narrow chemicallyically we see stress hormones get flushed out of the system
Starting point is 00:05:46 when you move into flow. And four or five or six of the most potent performance enhancing feel good. Neurochemicals, the brain can produce, get shot into your system. There's physiological changes as well. We can now measure changes to heart rate and heart rate variability and facial expressions and facial muscles. And there's a bunch of other things that we look for now when we try to figure out if people are in flow, but those are the basic kind of neurobiological changes. The scientific definition of flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and we perform our best.
Starting point is 00:06:17 The neurobiology and physiology that I've just been describing, that's what we mean. Like when we say flow, we're talking about very, very specific neurobiological changes, changes in the brain and the body that are very magical and very distinct. And there's also like a potent shift of neurochemicals that strengthen motivation, creativity and learning. Can you walk us through what neurochemicals are exactly and why this boost in neurochemicals is so addictive? Yeah, so neurochemicals are sad or one of the two ways the brain communicates, right? They're signaling molecules. And typically, by the way, the brain isn't very
Starting point is 00:06:56 fancy, it's kind of a binary engine. So usually what the signals are is do more of this thing or do less of this thing. That's really what neurochemicals do. But the neurochemicals you get in flow, nor epinephrine dopamine, and nanidamide, and dorphins, possibly serotonin, possibly oxytocin. They're all performance-enhancing chemicals, first of all. So muscle reaction times speed up. They didn't pain, strengthen increases. This is all stuff they're doing. But their biggest impact is you pointed out are cognitive and their cognitive performance enhanced in chemicals. So
Starting point is 00:07:30 their biggest impacts are motivation learning and creativity. And we'll start with motivation because you hinted at that. These chemicals, besides performance enhancement are pleasure drugs. Though the brains were a reward system, right? We are goal-directed creatures, human beings are. And underpinning all this goal direction are rewards. And underpinning all these rewards are feel good neurochemicals. And just to give you an idea, so romantic love, when you fall in love, you fall in love before? Yes.
Starting point is 00:08:00 It's fun, right? Really, really, really fun, right? Of course. My point is that when we're falling in love, that is predominantly norapinephrine and dopamine. And this is not my work. This is Helen Fisher's work at Rutgers on this. But fall in love is most people's favorite experience, right? And that's only two of flow's five neurochemical cocktails.
Starting point is 00:08:19 These are really potent, potent, pleasure drugs. So potent that researchers talk about flow is the most addictive state on earth. And if you want to see the performance side of that, McKinsey did a 10 year study of top business executives, and they found that top executives are five times more productive in flow than out of flow. That's a 500% boost in productivity and motivation.
Starting point is 00:08:42 That's what addictive dl chemistry can do. So one of the great things about flow is you're actually getting your own biology to work for you rather than against you. And this is what that means. So you can get this huge step function worth of change in motivation from flow. Similar thing happens in creativity.
Starting point is 00:09:00 So creativity really gets jacked up in flow primarily because all these neural chemicals Surround the creative process that surround the brain's information processing Machinery so in studies done by my organization some done it Harvard some done in the University of Sydney, Australia We see that creativity spikes in about 400 to 700 percent in flow and then through some model at Harvard figured out that I didn't creativity can outlast the flow state by a day sometimes too, huge boost in creativity and learning. We see something very similar, quick shorthand for how learning works in the brain, the more neural chemicals that show up during an experience, better
Starting point is 00:09:37 chance that experience will go from short term holding to long term storage. Another thing that neural chemicals do, the tag experiences is critically important, save for later. Flow, which is this huge neurochemical dump, really magnifies learning. So experiments run by the department of defense. We see learning will spike in flow some 230%. These again, huge, huge, huge change, very, very useful.
Starting point is 00:10:03 The best way to maximize productivity is to enter a flow state. There's a lot of great time management practices out there like the Pomodoro technique that encourage you to take breaks and rest your brain. But the fact is, if you're not focused on something for at least 90 minutes consecutively, you're missing out on these massive neurochemical dumps that shoot your creativity, motivation, and ability to retain information through the roof. Now that you know the benefits of flow,
Starting point is 00:10:27 let's learn how to get into a flow state using flow triggers. Flow states have triggers, right? You take one of our classes, one of my trainings, that's what we're teaching you how to do. We're teaching how to use and deploy these triggers. If you want more flow in your life, the triggers are your toolkit.
Starting point is 00:10:43 There are 22 that have been discovered. There are way more, there are way, way, way more. This is just what we've discovered. And the easy way to think about it, and then I'll get into a little bit of the science, triggers will lower cognitive load. Coggle loads all the crap you're thinking about at any one point in time. And if I lower cognitive load, I liberate a bunch of energy that you brain will then repurpose for paying attention to the present moment. So that's from a neurobiological perspective of what all the triggers are doing. And some of them are obvious. Complete concentration is a flow trigger. And that's the place you want, you have to start when I work with companies,
Starting point is 00:11:26 I always walk in and I say, look, if you cannot hang a sign in your door that says, fuck off, I'm flowing, you can't do this work. And I'm not actually joking. I'm pretty serious, but on an individual level, what it means is you want to set a time for flow. And how much time, what the research shows is that you want to block off periods of time for un-interrupted concentration if you can, that are 90 to 120 minutes long. This is an arbitrary, just like we have
Starting point is 00:11:59 a 90 to 120-minute long REMS like cycle when we dream. We also have a waking, focused cycle that's roughly the same amount. So the brain is essentially designed to focus for this period of time. In my life, it means that I like to start my day with my focus period. What the research shows is that if you really want to maximize flow, you want to start your work session, your 90 to 20 minutes in accordance with your circadian rhythms. So I'm an extreme lark. I love getting up super early in the morning.
Starting point is 00:12:33 I've been up since 3.30 this morning. That's when I got up to start working. My wife's a night up. She's going to wake up in a couple of hours and she's going to work all night. Most people are sort of best alert in the morning, eight o'clock, nine o'clock, that's where they kind of stop into consciousness, but you can't really fight your circadian rhythms.
Starting point is 00:12:51 So if you have any control over your schedule, what you wanna do is sort of block off 90 to 20 minutes kind of the period where you're gonna be most alert towards with your biological clock and practice distraction management. You can't be kind of the sailing network. It's going to win. So you want to basically shut off anything that's going to distract you from what you're
Starting point is 00:13:13 going to focus on from. I like to start my work session, my hardest task, the hardest thing I have to do all day and the thing that if I completed, it's the biggest victory for my day. I want to start with the biggest win always if I can or the thing that's going to just take the most effort for both together. For me that's usually writing my book, whatever book I'm writing at the time. So that's sort of how I start my day and I turn off Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and my cell phone and instant messages and all my alerts and my phone ahead of time And I also have conversations
Starting point is 00:13:50 You know, if you need me and you work with me You know there's certain hours that I am just not available my life knows these hours. I'm not available And one of the I always tell people have your conversations at time, you're going to do this work, flow massively, amplify productivity. But you need focused time to get that amplification. So it's worth saying, hey, to all the people who love you or your bosses or want your attention, hey, you're going to get more of me, but to get more of me, I need to be more productive and you need to leave me alone for this period of time. That's the most common flow trigger.
Starting point is 00:14:23 To put it more specifically, flow is really trainable. And the reason I know this is the flow research collective, we train about 1,000 people a month. And we train everybody from Olympic athletes and professional athletes and members of the US Special Forces to see sweet executives and Fortune 500 companies to largees of the companies themselves.
Starting point is 00:14:46 And I think right now we're working with everybody from Accenture who's a business consultancy to Audi the auto manufacturer. So huge swatches of corporate America. And then we train the general public. Everybody you could possibly imagine, insurance brokers in London and coders in Delhi and soccer moms in Iowa
Starting point is 00:15:05 and on and on. And so on average, because we measure flow pre and post, we see a 70% increase in flow. This stuff is incredibly, incredibly trainable. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success.
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Starting point is 00:18:53 at Stanford, who discovered that whenever the brain encounters novelty, complexity, and uncertainty, it produces large quantities of dopamine. And if you start getting like novelty and complexity together, or novelty and unpredictability, suppose he calls it the magic of maybe, the brain loves maybe, we love maybe, we love the thrum of possibility.
Starting point is 00:19:16 It's a really, really, really addictive, and you get a lot of dopamine from it, huge, huge squirts of dopamine. So this is why, for example, you've had this experience yourself. I'm sure where you've traveled and it's sort of like instant flow states, right? You find yourself, you're walking around Italy, your Greece, or wherever the hell you go, upstate New Jersey.
Starting point is 00:19:36 And it's totally new and you find yourself in a low grade flow state. And it's just kind of encountering novelty and unpredictability around every corner it's driving dopamine into your brain pretty soon it's going to drive you into flow. Cool. And then how about immediate feedback? This is Chick's et mehize work, one of those well validated flows, triggers, and again flow follows focus, right? So we pay the most attention to the task at hand. We know how we're doing, right?
Starting point is 00:20:05 Well, you don't have to wonder how am I doing. And so you can course correct in real time. This is why sports are so great at producing flow, same thing with some of the arts performing arts, and even some of the tactile arts, right? The very, very, very immediate feedback. In fact, there's direct correlations between those professions that get the most feedback and performance and flow as well. Surgeons, high flow activities, they get a lot of feedback, right? Like, your patient dies on the table, you did a bad job, that's immediate feedback, but jobs that have a lot less satisfaction like radiologists, they read radiological screens and they never even know what happens to their patient,
Starting point is 00:20:44 so they can't improve. And there's not a lot of flow in their jobs because they're not getting a feedback writing for example out of my own life. As publishing has shrunk over the past 20 years, editors have been able to do less and less editing. And so my editors don't really edit me anymore. I'm writing a book, if I get an editor to look at my book
Starting point is 00:21:04 two or three times along the way, that's huge. That's big. And that doesn't work for me. I need feedback a couple times a week on my writing. In fact, I need somebody to read my writing aloud to me a couple times a week and provide feedback. So that's where I have somebody on my staff who does that because I need that kind of feedback. So I tell people one of the best things you can do if you want to do this kind of work is find a feedback buddy at work, a friend, whatever. It's tricky to find the right criteria because everybody comes in with individual biases, right? So you have to learn how to steer and what you need to steer for and everybody's going to be different. You have to figure out what is the feedback that best you drives you towards flow?
Starting point is 00:21:46 I have not found a diagnostic that works for it. The only thing that I have found that works is when you find yourself in a deep flow state, one of the things to ask yourself is how much feedback did I receive along the way that got me here? You can only try and let that way and what kind of feedback is most useful to you. Those are things you have to figure out for yourself, but immediate feedback is a great flow trigger
Starting point is 00:22:08 Yeah, and I think related to this Jeff Bezos at Amazon He institutionalized yes in order to create states of flow where basically if somebody wanted to say no They had to write like a two-page paper on on why they said no Yeah, so I talk about this a little bit. This is a group flow thing. So individual flow is you or me and flow, but we can also get into a flow state together. It's a team performing at their best.
Starting point is 00:22:34 It's a fourth quarter comeback in football. It's a great brainstorming session. It's a band coming together, and when the music just sort of blows the roof off, the stadium kind of thing, right? So the basic group flow trigger is the first rule of improv, which is always say yes, yes and. And so in improv, they say this because if you and I are doing improv and you say to me,
Starting point is 00:22:56 I see even there's a blue elephant in the bathroom. And I say, shut the fuck up, no, there's not. Well, that's not very funny and the story doesn't go anywhere. Right? Like, not funny. They shut the fuck up, no, there's not. Well, that's not very funny, and the story doesn't go anywhere, right? Like, not funny, but if I say, oh crap, I hope he's not using up all the toilet paper, well, now we can build a scene, and it goes someplace exciting, right?
Starting point is 00:23:14 So conversations, idea generation needs to be additive, not argumentative. Now, this doesn't mean you can't criticize, you can, in fact, in brainstorming sessions, brainstorming sessions that are all about yes and positive feedback don't work, you can, in fact, in brainstorming sessions, brainstorming sessions that are all about yes and positive feedback don't work. You need to be critical, but you have to find something to be additive to build on to. And Jeff's point was that Amazon is so freaking easy, especially for middle managers who don't
Starting point is 00:23:38 want to get in trouble to say no to things. And we need group flow to succeed that he instituted an institutional yes policy. So if you're at Amazon and you want to say no, you've got to write a two-page memo and you've got to post it on a company website about why you say no so he can sort of work around this. Flow states help you achieve peak performance both by yourself and in group settings. What are some of the other ways that you can perform at your best and maximize your potential? Steven says the foundation of all peak performance is motivation. In this next clip, Steven will break down the value of motivation, the different levels
Starting point is 00:24:17 of motivation, and the problem with using grit as your primary fuel source. Motivation is defined. What a scientist means. It's defined as the energy fuel source. Motivation is defined. What a scientist mean, it's defined as the energy for action, right? That's literally the definition of motivation. When psychologists use the term motivation, it's a catch-all for four different categories of skill sets. There's extrinsic motivation. This is stuff in the world we're going to work hard to get.
Starting point is 00:24:41 Money, sex, fame, right? Intrinsic motivation. This is, you know, there's tons of different intrinsic motivators, but these are the things that drive us from the inside. Curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy that desire to drive our own bus, mastery that desire to get really great at the things we do. These are all really powerful intrinsic motivators, and I just named the big five that we're gonna focus on. There's also goal setting. There's three tiers of goals in there. And finally, there's six levels of grit skills.
Starting point is 00:25:11 There's six kinds of different grit skills. All that gets folded under this heading motivation. If you're interested in peak performance, if you're interested in performance, if you're interested in anything, motivation gets you into the game. There's no, you can't start without the energy to start. And what the science shows about motivation is it's actually meant to be cultivated in a specific
Starting point is 00:25:34 order. Like all those component parts, they start at one place and they go to another place. This is, and they get starts with extrinsic motivation, goes to interns, it goes to goals and goals to grit. And we can talk more about that in a second. The point isn't that you can go out of order. It's just that if you go in order, this is the way the system from a biological perspective
Starting point is 00:25:53 sort of evolved to evolve. And it just makes these, you just get farther faster. If you sort of do it online, but it pretty clear that you have to start if you're trying to amplify motivation, your interested in peak performance, motivations where you've got to start. If you want to increase motivation, you actually have to start with the experience of motivation. You have to start with stuff in the real world. The data is pretty clear.
Starting point is 00:26:15 Daniel Connman did a little bit of a lot of this research, not my work. But what the studies have shown is that we have to make enough money for that kind of like basic income and a little leftover of fun before we can even consider anything else. And the reason is fear can block peak performance. It blocks flow, it blocks peak performance, and it's too big of a detriment if you have food anxiety. How am I going to feed myself? How am I going to feed my children if you don't know where you're living?
Starting point is 00:26:43 If you have rent anxiety, if you can't win, you have to solve that problem first, then you go face all the other people for challenges. You don't need a lot of money. It's just literally enough to take care of my bills and a little leftover for fun. That's all you need. But if you're not there, it's really hard to do the other stuff. It's just too much fear. It's going to get in the way of too many things.
Starting point is 00:27:06 So start with the extrinsic. What the research shows is, OK, I've got extrinsic. I want more motivation, right? And what the studies show is that you now want to reach for intrinsic motivation. If you want really big boosts in productivity, yeah, we'll still keep wanting things in the real world It doesn't mean we stop wanting money, so I explain right of course I just stop doesn't go away
Starting point is 00:27:29 But if you're really interested in people performance and amplifying Productivity and motivation in things like this the way to go and as I said there's five big ones And they design work in order so it starts with curiosity Curious is the most basic intrinsic motivator. Curiosity is sort of designed to be built into passion, which is designed to be built into purpose. I want to talk about the question you asked, which is what is motivation good for? What do we care about it? And what does it have to do with focus and attention? And this is that answer. So curiosity, passion, purpose, time, and astute. These are all intrinsic
Starting point is 00:28:02 motivators. What's the big deal? People make a really big deal in the world about passion and purpose and things like that. And we hear a lot about them. And that may have a lot more to do with like a virtue, signaling than anything. Like from a peak performance perspective, this stuff is very selfish, actually. And the reason is simply this, when I think about curiosity, what do we get when we're curious about something? When you're curious about something? When you're interested in something, you pay attention to it automatically, you don't have to work hard, curiosity,
Starting point is 00:28:31 something with passion, you pay, think about falling in love, that's passion, how much the attention you pay to the other person, right? Tonnest up, purposes more of the same, et cetera, et cetera. Focus for free is a really big deal. The brain is a huge energy hall, it's 20, it's 25% of our energy at rest. So we're not even trying to do work yet. Just at rest. It's like one quarter of everything
Starting point is 00:28:50 you eat goes to run the tiny two two ounce thing in your head. That's just you know a tiny little bit of your body mass. So eugenic energy hog and passion is more focused, purpose is more and so forth. We get other things, but at a really basic level, that's the link. And each one of these is designed and built into another. Think about it. Curiosity builds into passion. Passion is, once we have a passion,
Starting point is 00:29:16 we couple that passion to a cause greater than ourselves. That's essentially the formula for purpose. Once you have purpose, the system wants the freedom to pursue that purpose. So autonomy becomes the next motivator that starts to matter. And finally, once you have the freedom to pursue your purpose, you want the skills to pursue it well. So that's where mastery comes into play. And so that's sort of the stack of intrinsic motivators. If you can get them properly stacked and all aligned and pointed in the same direction, you're bringing all your fuel sources to every problem encounter and that's the really
Starting point is 00:29:48 big deal. If you think about an athlete, you know when an athlete goes into a game, they got enough sleep the night before because rest matters. They had their proteins and their carbs and their hydration and their fats, right? Everything was, they wanted all the possible sources, so they could be at the rest But the same thing with mental fuel sources, right with motivation. That's why you want all of your motivators Pointed in the same direction because it's the same thing. So you're stacking a line in motivators You can tap every possible fuel source. It's for the simple reason that
Starting point is 00:30:22 have every possible fuel source. It's for the simple reason that peak performance, going after impossible levels, is hard. It's unpleasant. It's difficult. And if you don't have all your intrinsic motivators point in the same way, the only tool you're going to ever have to reach for is grit. Oh, this sucks.
Starting point is 00:30:39 I got to tough it out. And this sucks, I got to tough it out. It's not going to get you. You're going to get burned out. You won't get you can't. This sucks. I'm going to tough it out, is not gonna get you, you're gonna get burned out. You won't get, you can't, this sucks. I'm gonna tough it out, you're way to the impossible. It's too far, it's too hard. You have to have all these other fuel sources.
Starting point is 00:30:52 I always tell people that grit, however useful it is, is the last tool that people, performers reach for, not the first tool. And I think in a lot of society, we have it backwards, especially young your generation, because they're tougher, they're resilient. You can stay up all night like at college teachers who do that, being a young, but all this stuff you sort of learn how to do, so just reach for grit, reach for grit, because you're
Starting point is 00:31:18 tough enough, you can handle it. What you start to figure out pretty quickly is holy crap, this is a lot of us yet, like I can't do this, I'm going to end up up burned out because there's only so much grit to go around and even if you train up all six levels of grit and get them expert level it's still there's not enough of a fuels there's not enough energy there you have to reach for all the other motivators first and then grit is your last resort. Okay so if I have this correct it feels like motivation gives you this free energy source. It's like downstream, it's effortless, it kind of helps you get you going. Like you said, it's the first step.
Starting point is 00:31:52 You have to make sure that you have your extrinsic motivation satisfied first. So your basic needs, paying rent, being able to eat, getting food on the table. That needs to happen first before you can be ready to start tackling your intrinsic values. And then there's five main ones. What are the five again? Curiosity, passion, purpose, time and mastery. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Hear that sound, young and profitors? You should know that sound by now, but in case you don't, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that's revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide.
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Starting point is 00:33:12 that I use Shopify to sell my LinkedIn secrets masterclass. Setting up my Shopify store just took me a few days. I didn't have to worry about my website and how I was going to collect payments and how I was going to trigger abandoned cart emails and all these things that Shopify does for me was just a click of a button even setting up my chat bot was just a click of a button it was so easy to do like I said just took a couple of days and so it just allowed me to focus on my actual product and making sure my LinkedIn masterclass was the best it could be and I was able to focus on my marketing. So Shopify really, really helped me make sure that my masterclass was going to be a success
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Starting point is 00:34:25 Sush Profiting. Again, go to Shopify.com Sush Profiting, all lowercase to take your business to the next level today. Again, that Shopify.com Sush Profiting, Shopify.com Sush Profiting, all lowercase. This is possibility powered by Shopify. Yeah, bam. If you're ready to take your business to new heights, break through to the six or seven figure mark or learn from the world's most successful people, look no further because the Kelly Roach show has got you covered. Kelly Roach is a best-selling author, a top-ranked podcast host, and an extremely talented marketer. She's the owner of Not One, but six thriving companies, and now she's ready to share her knowledge and experience with you on the Kelly Roach show. Kelly is an inspirational entrepreneur and I highly respect her. She's been a guest on YAP. She was a former social client. She's a podcast client. And I remember when she came on young and profiting and she talked about her conviction marketing framework. It was like mind blowing to me. I remember immediately implementing what she taught me in the interview in my company
Starting point is 00:35:25 and the marketing efforts that we were doing. And as a marketer, I really, really respect all Kelly has done. All Kelly has built. In the corporate world, Kelly secured seven promotions in just eight years, but she didn't just stop there. She was working in nine to five. And at the same time, she built her eight figure company as a side hustle and eventually took it and made it her full-time hustle. And her strategic business goals led her to win the prestigious Inc. 500 award for the fastest growing business in the United States. She's built an empire she's earned a life-changing wealth. And on top of all that, she maintains a happy marriage and healthy home life. On the Kelly Road show, you'll learn that it's possible to have it all. Tune into the Kelly Road Show as she unveils her secrets for growing your business.
Starting point is 00:36:08 It doesn't matter if you're just starting out in your career or if your already seasoned entrepreneur. In each episode, Kelly shares the truth about what it takes to create rapid, exponential growth. Unlock your potential, unleash your success, and start living your dream life today. Tune into the Kelly Road Show, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Motivation gives you the energy for action, so if you aren't motivated by anything, or if your motivations are weak, you're not going to get very far.
Starting point is 00:36:38 Remember, if you want to become a peak performer in whatever you do, you need to be motivated by several different factors. Grid alone is not enough. Moving on, we've been focused on how to maximize your potential in the here and now. Once you have that mastered, you can start practicing peak performance aging, which keeps you healthy, strong, and energetic
Starting point is 00:36:57 as you enter your 40s, 50s, and beyond. Let's round out this episode by learning the core components of peak performance aging. So if you want to rock to your drop, if you really are interested in peak performance aging, you need to regularly engage in challenging creative and social activities that is dynamic, deliberate play and take place in novel outdoor environments. Now let's unpack what this big ass sentence and what it means and why it answers your question. So, challenging social and creative,
Starting point is 00:37:29 lifelong learning matters for a bunch of different reasons, but short version if we wanna preserve brain function, we need expertise in wisdom. Expertise in wisdom are these very diverse neural nets in the brain, lots of real estate, lots of redundancy and pervious to cognitive decline, the more expertise, the more wisdom. And this is why one of the reasons people performance aging starts young. Like literally the guy who did the core research on wisdom, Elkanaan Goldberg,
Starting point is 00:37:55 his core advice is that more wisdom, more expertise, the more we have cognitive reserve, the meaning, the more we can stave off Alzheimer's to dementia, cognitive decline. All the things that are going to happen to the brain over time, this is how we fight back. And his point was wisdom among the many things that encapsulated wisdom are all like the unconscious rules that govern how the systems work, how does behavior work, all that stuff. It's unborded slowly over time, so you want to start training these things.
Starting point is 00:38:24 You want to be start learning. Challenge and creative and social activities, we learn a lot during. There also tend to drive us into flow. Social activities are really important as we age. Most important thing you can do for your brain is maintain social activity because it keeps the brain active in really important ways and really low stress levels. So a lot of stuff we're going to be talking about. They're a nine-known cause of aging.
Starting point is 00:38:48 They're all linked to inflammation. Information is linked to stress. Anything you do that fight stress, that lowers stress, that gives you more emotional control is involved in peak performance aging. Social activities, lower stress, they give us these pros, social... Oh, there's people around who love me got my back I can be a little less stressed. So there's a lot of that stuff dynamic deliberate play is the next bit dynamic It's literally what we're talking about it. She's a fancy way of saying it. It's all five categories of functional fitness
Starting point is 00:39:17 It's right stamina flexibility balance agility deliberate play You've heard of deliberate practice Anders Erickson's favorite expertise, repetition with incremental advancement. It's the fastest path for his expertise. And Anders wasn't wrong, but as he himself said, that's only through in certain, very precise disciplines, and when faced with just general learning, Deliberate play works better than Deliber practice. Deliberate play is repetition with improvisation. You can do the same thing you did last time, but a little bit of flourish, little flower, little something fun. It's playful, meaning there's no shame, there's no embarrassment. If you're bad who carriage, you're having fun, but that feeling of play produces more
Starting point is 00:39:57 neurochemistry, more endorphins. This won really boost immune system lowers stress levels, but amplifies learning. So dynamic deliver place is I'm using all the physical skills that decline and I'm learning better than any other way. Novel outdoor environments, the last bit, why do we care? And this is back action sports, demand dynamic deliver play. And they take place in novel outdoor environments and they're challenging, creative, and social. So one stop shopping, the last bit is most important bit. One, outdoor environments in general
Starting point is 00:40:30 lower stress. We know this is as well, established in positive psychology. A 20 minute walk in the woods will outperform most SSRIs, treatment of depression. I can talk about why if you care, but like we know that good for you, lower stress. So in itself being in nature is anti-inflammatory. So it's better for healthy aging. But if you want to preserve brain function, how do you do that? You want to birth new neurons and turn those new neurons into neural nets. That's the learning. So the adult brain, contrary to what we used to believe for a long time, it actually does continue to birth new neurons. In fact, the adult brain will birth about 700 new neurons a day,
Starting point is 00:41:07 even basically until you die. But where do those neurons show up? Is the key question. They show up in a part of the brain, as they have a campus. The campus does two things. It does long-term memory, and it does location, place.
Starting point is 00:41:20 It's packed with place cells and grid cells. Why we evolved this hunter-gatherers. When you were in the wild and something emotionally charged happened, you better remember where you were when it happened. That's survival. So where did I get attacked by that tiger? So I don't go back there. Where was that right fruit tree?
Starting point is 00:41:36 So when it comes into season, I'm hungry. I can go there. This is survival. This is what the brain is designed to do. Peak performance and peak performance aging is always getting our biology to work for us rather than against us. Our biology is designed to remember when we have novel experiences and outdoor environments. So, that's what you want to use it for.
Starting point is 00:41:56 Action Sports gives you that. Now, I also say in the book that like if Action Sports is on your thing, you can duplicate a lot of this by simply hiking with a weight vest. And weight vest are really key, better than a lot of other things because they amplify bone density. Little known fact, your bones, like where you store all your minerals,
Starting point is 00:42:16 all your nutrients, are stored in your bones and the released into, so everything that drives the brain, calcium, for example, which is in everything the brain does, it's stored in the bones. So as our bones become less dense over time, which happens, it impacts everything. For women, really important, after menopause, where does most of your estrogen come from? Your bones.
Starting point is 00:42:38 So wildly fluctuating hormone levels, which is a problem that most people have postmenopause exacerbated by bone density. If you want to increase bone density, one of the best ways is hiking with weight vest. There's lots of literature, there's lots of science on that. There's a bunch of other benefits, but it hits all of those categories. If you're not interested in action sports, that said there's a lot to recommend in action sports. Hey, Yap fam. As you may know, I've been a full-time entrepreneur for three years now.
Starting point is 00:43:08 Yet media blew up so fast, it was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate. And I recently had best selling author Kim Scott on the show.
Starting point is 00:43:25 And after previewing her content in our conversation, I just knew I had to take her class on masterclass, tackle the hard conversations with radical candor to really absorb all she has to offer. And now I'm using her radical candor method every day with my team to give in solicit feedback, to cultivate a more inclusive culture, and to empower them with my team to give in solicit feedback to cultivate a more inclusive culture and to empower them with my honesty. And I can see my team feeling more motivated and energized already. They are really receptive to this framework and I'm so happy because I really needed this class.
Starting point is 00:43:57 With Masterclass, you can learn from the best to become your best anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace. And we all know that profiting in life doesn't just mean thriving in business. With Masterclass, you can brush up on your art skills, or your cooking skills, or even your modeling skills. With over 180 classes from a range of world class instructors, that thing you've always wanted to do better is just a few clicks away. On Masterclass, you'll find courses from many app-Star guests like Chris Voss and Daniel Pink. I've been taking their sales and negotiation classes and I've been feeling like a real shark lately. I've totally leveled up my sales skills. How much would
Starting point is 00:44:35 it cost you to take a one-on-one class from the world's best? A lot. But with Masterclass annual memberships, it just cost you $10 a month. I have to say the most surprising thing about masterclass since I started this incredible journey on the platform is the value for the quality of classes, instructors. The platform itself is beautiful. The videos are super high quality. You can't beat it. Gain new skills and as little as 10 minutes on your phone, your computer, tablet, smart TV,
Starting point is 00:45:06 and my personal favorite way to learn is their audio mode to listen on the go. That way, I can multitask while I learn. Get unlimited access to every class and right now as a app listener, you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com-profiting. That's masterclass.com-profiting for 15% off an annual membership.
Starting point is 00:45:24 Masterclass.com-profiting.% off an annual membership masterclass.com slash profiting. And there you have it, Yap fam. Some of our favorite tips from Steven Kotler on peak performance and flow. Steven is an absolute genius. And I can't wait to have him back on Yap again. To recap, low states produce several neurochemical cocktails in your brain, giving you a 500% boost in productivity, a 4 to 700% boost in creativity, and a 230% boost in learning. The best way to enter a flow state is by focusing all of your attention on one task, but you can use other flow triggers to enter a flow
Starting point is 00:45:56 state like novelty, complexity, and feedback. Don't try to take on a big task if you aren't motivated to do it because you will run out of energy. Before you even start, you need to have your basic needs met. Then you need to have extrinsic motivation. That's what you want to achieve in the world, as well as intrinsic motivation, which is made up of curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and mastery. And all of your extrinsic and intrinsic motivators should be pointed in the same direction. And of course, you need grit and perseverance, but those should be your emergency energy reserves and you should not be primarily fueled by grit. And finally, if you wanna say fit and energetic
Starting point is 00:46:32 as you age, engage in challenging creative and social activities and dynamic deliberate play, ideally in novel outdoor environments. So fun fact, I used to ski all the time when I was younger, but once I hit my 30s, I felt like I was too old to ski because I thought that I had too much to lose. I was worried that my body wouldn't be able to handle it. And honestly, I've got a lot to live for right now, and I just didn't want to get hurt. But let me tell you, after talking to Steven, I feel like that was silly. I feel like I'm totally young enough to go
Starting point is 00:47:01 back to skiing and snowboarding and the long-term benefits of action sports are just too good to miss out on. If you want to learn more about Stephen Kotler, we have his website, his socials, and his books all linked in the show notes. And if you like this YAHPSNAC, be sure to check out all of our full interviews that's episode number 32 flown to the future, master the impossible episode number 138. And we had him on pretty recently episode number 211 on peak performance aging, how to state the top of your game in your 30s, 40s, 50s, and we had them on pretty recently, episode number 211 on peak performance aging, how to state the top of your game in your 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. And lastly, we also had them on Clubhouse, so if you want to scroll through the archives, you can find that one, and all the episodes are linked in the show notes for easy access. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast.
Starting point is 00:47:42 If you enjoyed this episode, drop us a-star review on Apple or your favorite podcast platform, and if you liked this episode make sure you share it with a friend. You guys can find me on Instagram at Yappathala or LinkedIn if you search my name, Halataha, and if you like watching your podcast in video format check us out on YouTube. Big thanks to my amazing app team, thank you so much for all that you do, I couldn't do without you, you guys rock, you crush this one. Appreciate all your help. This is your host, the podcast princess, Haulataha, signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben
Starting point is 00:48:39 Podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time energy or money. Suggestions such as follow the one minute rule.
Starting point is 00:49:06 Choose a one word theme for the year or design your summer. We also feature segments like know yourself better where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever. And every episode includes a happiness hack,
Starting point is 00:49:23 a quick easy shortcut to more happiness. Listen and follow the podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin. The On The Job Podcast from Express Employment Professionals is back for season seven. And I thought, God, I wish I knew of a woman mechanic. I would drive long distances to bring my car to a woman who was a mechanic. And then I thought, I bet a lot of other women feel this way.
Starting point is 00:49:50 I'm going to open up an old girl garage and I'm going to make a million dollars. Check out on the job from Express Employment Professionals on I Heart Radio or wherever you listen. or wherever you listen.

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